There’s nothing Beerlandia likes more than a collab and the latest crossover can to land, ahead of Easter, is the Golden Goo-Beer-Lee Creme Stout.
If that name sounds overly workshopped, it’s because your fave fondant-filled chocolate egg is celebrating its 50th birthday in 2021 and marking the occasion by releasing a limited-edition beer with Goose Island brewery.
Golden Goose... Golden Jubilee... you get the idea. The only thing anyone really needs to know is: does it taste any good? Well, I guess that depends on whether you like stout. Or Creme Eggs.
We managed to get hold of a few cans before the first batch sold out – here’s how they went down.
My partner, who’s a quarter Irish, is partial to a pint of Guinness now and then, especially during the Six Nations, which is near enough to Easter, I guess, for this novelty beer to make sense to him.
He’s also a chocolate fiend, though more of a Mini Eggs man than a Creme Egg guy. And me? I love Creme Eggs and also like beer, though I don’t really classify stout as the latter. It’s a bit like drinking ink, even when it’s chocolate-flavoured.
On the face of it then, the Golden Goo-Beer-Lee should be a shoo-in for my BF – but is the Cadbury’s connection enough to convert me, too?
Our beers arrive with the classic purple, red and yellow Creme Egg insignia that make the months of January to March bearable, only the yellow is now a Goose Island logo. “I like the goose, it’s a pretty tin,” says my partner, but I only have eyes for the four Creme Eggs nestling in the same box.
The serving suggestion says to “evenly bite the top of the Creme Egg, lick the goo and use the chocolate shell as a tiny beer vessel”. But we make like normal people, crack open one of the cans, and each take a cautionary sniff.
“It smells like a very rich Guinness.”
“It smells like a very rich Guinness,” he says of the “collab nobody asked for”. His words. The whiff of stout reminds me of messing up the shamrock on a head of Guinness at our student bar, while pulling pints so badly that no one wanted to be served by me. “But it doesn’t taste like one,” he continues, venturing a sip. “It’s not as thick as an ordinary stout. There’s a fizz to it, too. Almost quite lagery. I don’t not like it.”
The “eggclectic blend” of malted barley, oats, wheat and milk sugar is meant to give a rich and creme-y texture, say the brewers, with the cacao nibs and vanilla beans adding to the smoothness.
I grab the can, take a sip and... am pleasantly surprised. There’s an immediate hint of chocolate (that’ll be the cacao nibs) and while yes, it’s definitely thinner than Irish stout – thank the lord – there’s a rich sweetness along with the fizz, the kind you get from a cream soda beer, like Brewdog’s Snowball.
Does it taste like Creme Eggs? Well, no, but would you really want it to? I do as instructed and bite the top off one of the actual eggs, then fill my little cup!
It’s gimmicky, but once again, the tastes actually combine okay. I drink my beer, eat my egg – then another one – but pass the can back to my partner who finishes it off without any problems, I note. As novelty drinks go, it’s fun. But I’m more than happy to consume my eggs and beer separately from now on.
Golden Goo-Beer-Lee will get a limited release of 500 packs on Monday 8 March with purchases limited to two cans for £10 per customer – details here.